


Midnight in the Garden

by icarus_chained



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: City at War, Defiance, Gen, Good and Evil, Interlude, Love, Maternal Feelings, No Man's Land (DCU), Orphans, Protectiveness, Supervillains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small interlude during No Man's Land. In the quiet of the park, listening to the continuing violence in the city outside, Ivy and Rose have a talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight in the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/690071.html?thread=90707607#t90707607) on [comment_fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/): DCU, Poison Ivy, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I haven't written DCU in _ages_ , and cannot promise the quality of this. Ivy and Rose, in Robinson Park, during No Man's Land.

The park was dark and silent, an oasis of stillness in the chaos of the city around them. Even in the middle of the night, sporadic gunfire and the occasional explosion could be heard echoing out over the ruins of Gotham, skirmishes in the now-endless wars for territory. If Robinson Park was a new Eden, made in its goddess' image, then the rest of No Man's Land was a new Hell, come to lay it siege. 

In vain, of course. Only ever in vain. Eden had fallen to Hell's manipulations once before. It would not do so again. This, Ivy had promised herself.

She heard a sound behind her, a hesitant rustling in the midnight silence, and turned slightly to watch Rose approach. The child crept into her shadow, hiding behind her from the noise and the violence of the outside world. She didn't look away from it, though. She let Ivy shield her, but she didn't hide her face from what was out there. It stirred something in Ivy, some long-forgotten human feeling, and she reached out to rest her hand carefully on the child's head.

"It's not so loud tonight," Rose whispered, quiet and brave as she leaned into Ivy's touch. "Do you think it's going to stop?"

Ivy blinked. She looked back out, towards the sounds of the warring city hidden by the trees. It was quieter, she supposed. There were lulls like that, here or there. Nights with more peace than others. It looked like this was one of them. 

That wasn't what Rose meant, though. That wasn't quite what she was asking.

"It doesn't ever stop," Ivy told her. Baldly, but as gently as she knew how. They deserved gentleness. Rose. The others sleeping behind her. Ivy's children. "Violence, evil, they are the preserve of man, my dear. Humans are animals. It's all they know."

Rose stared at her, silent for a moment. There was an expression on her face, confusion, hurt and fear and the edges of something that she was too young to really grasp. She had seen a lot, this poor child sheltered in Ivy's shadow. Some things were not for children to understand, though.

And yet. After that moment, that silence, Rose reached out to her. She slipped small arms around Ivy's waist, slowly and warily, and hugged her tight.

"I don't think that's true," she whispered, into Ivy's stomach. "Not everyone's evil. You're not. And ... and I'm not. I don't think I'm evil. I'm human too, and I don't think I'm evil."

That ... It _hurt_. It hurt something inside Ivy, hurt her more than she understood, for reasons she couldn't understand. She couldn't ... Oh, but she couldn't. So many years of bitterness, of knowing exactly what mankind was, but from Rose ...

"... No," she said softly, the words falling strangely from numb, poisonous lips. She shook her head, and put her arms slowly and so very, very carefully around Rose's shoulders, a hesitant hug in return. "No, you're not evil, Rose. I know you're not. And maybe you're right. Maybe not everyone is. Maybe there are good people out there. But I ..."

She didn't know how she'd intended to finish that. _I'm not one of them_. Not human. Not good. Not anymore. The words wouldn't come. Rose's arms were tight around her waist, and she couldn't make herself say them. As true as they were, she couldn't say them.

Maybe Rose heard them anyway. She tilted her head back, looked up at Ivy with such a simple, battered trust. A child's trust, an orphan's trust, after all that Gotham's hell had thrown at them. Something lurched in Ivy's chest, battered hard and painful and animal-like against her ribs. A heart she'd thought long dead.

"You're not evil either," Rose told her, soft and gentle and with absolute sincerity, and Ivy closed her eyes. She held the child close, and closed her eyes against the sight of that trust. She couldn't bear it. It wasn't deserved. And yet it would have to be. Ivy wasn't good. If she ever had been, she wasn't anymore. She had been remade by violence and by hate, and she had become something different, something _better_ in the process. Evil, perhaps. Not a human one, but an evil nonetheless. Anything that destroyed was evil. 

But even evil could protect. Ivy had always meant her destruction to be that, an act of protection for a world twisted and befouled by the violence and destruction of those around her. To rebuild Eden, you see, one had to destroy Hell. She had meant to do that. To hold the line against it, at least, to keep this patch of green, to make this one oasis against the night and keep some small piece of goodness safe inside it. Her child. Her children. Rose.

No. No, Ivy wasn't good, not by any means. By the standards of men, and even by her own, she was a twisted thing, an evil thing, capable of great and terrible violence. But No Man's Land lay outside their walls. Hell crept up against the boundaries of their Eden. So long as that was true, so long as those other, more human evils lay in wait to threaten her children, Ivy would not flinch from what she was capable of. Good or evil, she would not fail her children's trust. Let Hell come knocking once again. She would answer it in kind.

"... You should get some rest, Rose," she murmured at last, opening her eyes and looking down at the child in her arms. Calm, now. Gentle in the face of the child's confusion. "It's late. You should go and lie down."

Rose was sceptical, of course, possibly disappointed, but she didn't argue. She gave Ivy one last squeeze around the waist, a little pat on the hip as if in comfort, and went to join her brothers and sisters in sleep. Ivy watched her go, a fierce, animal thing in her chest. She watched her child lie down, watched Rose slip into the peaceful sleep of the innocent. 

And then she turned, a guardian and a goddess in the garden of good and evil, and faced the waiting siege once more. She stood proud and fierce and deadly, her children sleeping in her shadow, and dared all of Hell to come try their hand against her.

Outside the stillness of the park, the latest burst of gunfire stuttered to a halt, and a midnight silence blanketed their shattered city once more.


End file.
